Monday, November 30, 2015

One-Straw Revolutionary

Long, long ago, hip folks in the Beatles era were jabbering
about Masanobu Fukuoka’s book, The
One-Straw Revolution.It explained
how he grew healthy food via natural
farming, a low budget, low impact approach.On his farm in Japan, Fukuoka was growing grain, fruit, and vegetables
without plowing, cultivating, chemicals, compost, fertilizer, fossil energy,
erosion, pruning, or regular weeding.He
farmed like this for more than 25 years, and his yields were comparable to
those at conventional farms.

The Japanese edition of his book was published in 1975, at a
time when oil shocks had spurred interest in energy efficiency.When the English version was published in
1978, it was an international smash hit, and Fukuoka became a celebrity.Larry Korn was the book’s translator.He’s a California lad who worked on Fukuoka’s
farm for more than two years.Now, in
2015, Korn has published One-Straw
Revolutionary, which is the subject of this review.It describes Fukuoka the man, and his
philosophy, with glowing praise.

Korn detests conventional industrial farming, because it has
so many drawbacks.A bit less
troublesome is organic farming done on an industrial scale.At the positive end of the spectrum, he sees
Fukuoka’s natural farming as very close to the ideal, both environmentally and
philosophically.A bit less wonderful
than natural farming are permaculture and old-fashioned small-scale organic
farming.

The ideal is something like the California Indians that were
fondly described in M. Kat Anderson’s book, Tending the
Wild.They were wild
hunter-gatherers who included wild plant seeds in their diet.They devoted special care to the wild plant
species that were important to their way of life.Most folks would consider this to be mindful
foraging — tending, not farming.

These Indians did not till the soil, and were not warlike.Nobody owned the land.There were no masters or servants.There was no market system or tax
collectors.They had a time-proven
method for living, and this knowledge was carefully passed from generation to
generation.The Indians were wild, free,
and living sustainably — in the original meaning of the word.When the Spanish invaders arrived, they saw
these Indians as lazy, because they worked so little.

Fukuoka, on the other hand, resided in a densely populated
industrial civilization, which was eagerly adapting American style industrial
agriculture.While the Indians foraged
in a healthy wild ecosystem, Fukuoka worked on an ecosystem that had been
heavily altered by centuries of agriculture.He raised domesticated plants and animals. Fukuoka was experimenting with radically
unconventional methods, and had no traditions or mentors to guide him.

He practiced natural farming on one acre (0.4 ha) of grain
field, and ten acres (4 ha) devoted to a mix of fruit trees and
vegetables.When Korn arrived in 1974,
Fukuoka was assisted by five apprentices, who were not at all lazy, and rarely
had a day off.Cash had to be generated
to purchase necessities and pay taxes, so surplus food had to be produced.Food shipped off to cities carried away
phosphorus, potassium, and other minerals that never returned to the farm’s
soil.Thus, his natural farming was
quite different from California tending.

On the plus side, Fukuoka’s experiment benefitted from rich
soil and generous rainfall — especially during the growing season.Vegetables could be grown year round in the
mild climate, and two crops of grain could be harvested each year.On the down side, few succeeded in
duplicating his success, even in Japan.It took years to get the operation working, requiring extra servings of
intuition and good luck.Korn warned, “In
most parts of North America and the world the specific method Mr. Fukuoka uses
would be impractical.”

In the natural farming mindset, the strategy should not be
guided by intellect; nature should run the show.Fukuoka talked to plants, asking them for
guidance.When he planted the orchard, he
added a mixture of 100 types of seeds to wet clay, made seed balls, and tossed
the balls on the land.Seeds included
grains, vegetables, flowers, clover, shrubs, and trees.Nature decided what thrived and what
didn’t.Within a few years, a jungle of dense
growth sorted itself out.But sometimes
nature gave him a dope slap.In the
early days, Fukuoka allowed nature to manage an existing orchard, and he was
horrified to watch 400 trees die from insects and disease.

My work focuses on ecological sustainability, at a time when
the original meaning of sustainability has largely been abandoned, and replaced
by sparkly marketing hype.I go on full
alert when I see “sustainable agriculture.”In my book, What
is Sustainable, I took a look at what Korn calls “indigenous
agriculture,” which is often imagined to be sustainable.

California tending was far different from the intensive corn
farming on the other side of the Rockies, which led to soil depletion, erosion,
population growth, health problems, warfare, and temporary civilizations like
Cahokia.In his book Indians
of North America, Harold E.
Driver estimated that less than half of North America was inhabited by farmers,
but 90 to 95 percent of Native Americans ate crop foods, indicating that farm
country was densely populated.In corn
country, defensive palisades surrounded many villages.

In 2015, humankind is
temporarily in extreme overshoot, as the cheap energy bubble glides toward its
sunset years, and the climate change storms are moving in.Obviously, feeding seven billion sustainably is
impossible.At the same time, highly unsustainable
industrial farming cannot continue feeding billions indefinitely.It’s essential that young folks have a good
understanding of ecological sustainability, and our education system is doing a
terrible job of informing them.

The California Indians provide an important example of a
vital truth.When voluntary
self-restraint was used to keep population below carrying capacity, people
could live sustainably in a wild ecosystem via nothing more complex than hunting
and foraging.They had no need for
farming, with its many headaches, backaches, and heartaches.

Korn’s book got exciting near the end.Farming was just one facet of Fukuoka’s
dream.As a young man, he attended an agriculture
college, and then endured a dreary job as a plant inspector.His mind overloaded, his health fell apart,
and he nearly died.In 1937, he had a beautiful
vision, quit his job, and went back home to the farm.

In his vision, he suddenly realized that all life was one,
and sacred.Nature was whole, healthy,
and perfect — and nothing our ambitious intellects imagined could improve this harmonious
unity in any way.Humans do not exist in
a realm outside of nature, no matter what our teachers tell us.Heaven is where your feet are standing.

The world of 1937 was a filthy, crazy, overpopulated train
wreck, and this was largely thanks to science, dogmas, and philosophies.Intellect alienated us from our “big life”
home. Civilization had created a
dysfunctional world that was far too complex.The lives of most people were no longer intimately connected to the
natural world.

In agriculture, the herd of experts insisted that plowing,
pruning, cultivating, chemicals, and weeding were mandatory for success.One after another, Fukuoka abandoned these
required tasks, made some needed adjustments, and didn’t crash.His farm got simpler and healthier.

No other animals harm themselves by pursuing science.Fukuoka realized that people should be like
birds.“Birds don’t run around carefully
preparing fields, planting seeds, and harvesting food.They don’t create anything… they just receive
what is there for them with a humble and grateful heart.”Bingo!

How can we reorient to nature?“For most of us, that process begins by
unlearning most of the things we were taught when we were young.”The healing process requires abandoning many,
many beliefs and behaviors that our culture encourages.We need to waste less, spend less, and earn
less, take only what we need, and nothing more.“Wearing simple clothing, eating simple food, and living a humble,
ordinary life elevates the human spirit by bringing us closer to the source of
life.”

2 comments:

Thom Hawkins
said...

Your last two reviews are very forceful--I felt refreshed after reading them because you use language that unequivocally clears away the fog of growth rhetoric. I feel oppressed by the limp words coming out of the mainstream environmental movement's mouths as they dance gingerly around offending the public by suggesting we all might have to give up something, give up a lot. Your words cut through the rhetoric because you ground historic perspective alongside the present day reality that others ignore in a vernacular style that does full justice to the depth of our perfidy in our war on the earth and on our bodies.